Suckle the Baby, Joan.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger knew what was good for him, he would have gotten a part in Back to the Future and teleported back to 1632, when bringing your love-child home for your wife to raise along with your other child of the exact same age was the decent thing.

Our story opens with a husband who cheats and brings home the baby. He doesn’t want to pay for it to be fed at a noble’s house (this is 1632, after all–the cost of living is up!). His wife just had a baby of her own and doesn’t particularly feel like feeding another one. Plus, she’s pretty mad.

If it seems like a recipe for meditating on the evils of adultery, guess again. 1632 Maria Shriver gets no sympathy. Instead, she stars instead in a song whose chorus is “Suckle the baby, Jone,” and her last name might as well be Crawford, that’s how bad she is.

His wife was somewhat currish,

for she refus’d to nourish

a child which he brought home…

Below, Joan is pictured engaged in a nice bit of womanly blackmail, trading love for domestic carte blanche vis-a-vis the hubby even as she threatens to “nourish” the baby with a gigantic spoon.